


you'll be something you wouldn't understand

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Gen, Grief, POV Second Person, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-28
Updated: 2010-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 07:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is your life now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you'll be something you wouldn't understand

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [**a softer world**](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=62). Spoilers through 5.22.

The first morning after your brother dies to save the world, you don't wake up, because you don't go to sleep. You and Bobby stay up all night drinking, and you try not to resent the fact that Bobby got resurrected and Sam got left down in the pit with Lucifer (and Adam, but you can't think about the other brother you failed, the one you never even got to know, the one you tried not to resent because Dad took him fishing and to ball games instead of putting a gun in his hand at the age of six) and you couldn't even go with him. Sam always leaves you behind. It's a fact of life, like the sun rising in the east and the Cubs choking in the playoffs.

It's a fact of life, but you never get used to it.

You finally pass out around seven, wake up five hours later with a mouth that tastes like dead things and a head that aches as much from crying as from drinking. You roll off the couch and onto the floor, neck stiff and eyes swollen. Bobby hands you a mug of coffee. You don't talk. You have nothing to say. Your whole body hurts; your skin feels two sizes too small, like your bones are going to poke through at any moment. It wouldn't surprise you if they did. You don't think you'd even feel it.

You put a new windshield in the car, bang out the dents and buff the paint to a perfect shine, but your heart isn't in it. Your heart is buried in a hole in Stull cemetery. You love the car, like you love the jacket and your guns and your tapes, and maybe the car was always yours first, but time travel makes your head hurt, so the car--like the jacket, the music, the quest--is Dad's. Sam was _yours_, first and last and always.

From the moment Dad put him in your arms the night Mom died, Sam was yours. Hell, you don't really remember it, but maybe he was yours before that, when Mom first told you that you were going to have a baby brother or sister, and you sat in her lap and read to her baby bump. You've imagined it, but you can't remember it, and thinking about it now makes you sick.

You puke in the dust behind the car. You don't get any on your boots or your jeans, but it's a near-run thing. A bird calls shrill and urgent somewhere in the sky. More birds, swooping through the warm, spring air, answer. You stand with your hands on your knees and your head hanging down, your breath hitching in your chest and the taste of vomit in your mouth. An ant crawls across the ground between your boots, then skitters off towards the puddle of vomit. You feel like you've been standing there for hours. Maybe you've always been standing there, watching the ant crawl across the ground so it can drown in a puddle of vomit.

The smell gets to you, though, right up inside your sinuses the way the smell of rotting flesh or burning bones doesn't anymore, and you gag and retch again, strings of yellow bile dangling from your mouth while you heave up whatever's left of your drinking binge. You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, and the back of your hand on your jeans.

Your gut hurts and you have a headache and when you straighten up, the world tilts the wrong way, just a little. You wait, but there's no steadying hand on your back, no affectionately amused murmur of Dean, no offer of a bottle of water warm from sitting inside the car for a few days.

You break down again, curl up against the rear passenger-side tire and sob like a little kid.

The dog finds you there a while later. The puddle of vomit is covered in ants and the birds are wheeling overhead. You wonder if they're vultures, waiting on your corpse. Because you're dead already, your body just doesn't know it yet. You let the dog lick the tears and vomit and snot off your face.

The sun is low in the sky when you head back inside. Bobby has the newspaper out, is already looking for a new hunt. He asks you to come with, but you remember the promise you made and say nothing. He tells you to stay as long as you like, but there's still things out there that need hunting, and he's the man for the job. He makes chili for dinner and gives you a hug before he heads upstairs to bed.

You stay up as late as you can, drinking yourself into oblivion. You take your gun out, lay it on the table with shaking hands. There's a bitter taste to the metal when you put the barrel in your mouth. It's heavier than you expected, cooler and smoother on your tongue. You put your finger on the trigger, and only the thought of making Bobby clean up your mess keeps you from pulling it. You put down the gun and pick up the bottle. That's warm and slick in your mouth, and the whiskey burns like a penance down your throat.

Bobby's gone when you finally wake up, squinting against the light, your neck and shoulders sore from sleeping hunched over on the couch. There's a note, but you can't make your eyes focus enough to read it. You crumple it up and shove it in the pocket of your jacket.

You don't stay at Bobby's. You don't look back as you drive away.

The road rolls out before you, familiar, comforting for as long as you can pretend you're going to pick Sam up, or you're just waiting for him to get back from a supply run. You can't pretend for very long, which sucks, but you've always been lousy at it when it counted.

You head east. You wait as long as you can to stop and piss by the side of the road. You don't eat. You find an old bottle of water under the seat and drink it when your mouth is so dry it feels like the desert. The water tastes like plastic. You don't look at the empty seat next to you.

It's dark when you get to Lisa's, but when you knock, she takes you in.

It's never too late, she says, and you wish you could believe it. You let her hug you. You cry on her shoulder and, later, let her lead you to bed. She climbs into the bed beside you and rests her head on your chest. You're glad she doesn't seem to be expecting anything more, because there's no way you'll be able to give it to her. Her hair smells nice. You make it thirty whole seconds without thinking of Sam and it feels like a betrayal.

You drink yourself sick every night for a month and put your gun in your mouth every morning. It takes you that long to recognize the wide-eyed look on Ben's face when he sits across from you at the breakfast table, to remember seeing the whites of your own eyes in the mirror sometimes when Dad would come home drunk and crying, and Sam was too little to understand what that meant.

Forty-seven days after your brother dies to save the world, you wake up holding onto the woman you promised you would try to make a life with. You didn't promise that to her, though, and you finally figure that out when you're confronted with the fact that you have no cash, no usable credit cards, and no other way to get more booze except either ask Lisa for money or steal it from her. You can't do that, any more than you can blow your brains out in her nice suburban bathroom with the tiles imported from Italy and the fancy fixtures that look like the Hollywood version of something out of Little House on the Prairie.

You can see the sad look on Sam's face when you close your eyes, so real that you expect to see him shaking his giant stupid head at you when you open them. He's not there, but for the first time in a while, you feel ashamed.

It's okay, Lisa says when you try to tell her this without sounding like you belong in the nuthouse, but you know it's not, and you know she knows it's not. Hell, Ben's only ten and he knows it's not okay, knows that maybe it will never be okay, because you live in a world where monsters exist, where hell is real, and your brother is there (both of them are there, because it feels wrong not to include Adam, though you never knew him and still aren't sure you ever wanted to), and you're supposed to live with that somehow for the rest of your life.

But you need to make sure that never touches Ben again, not if you can help it, so you sober up for a weekend marathon of warding the house. You find Bobby's amulets in the trunk and give one to Ben and one to Lisa, and try to ignore the missing weight of your own amulet. That lack sends you down the rabbit hole again. It's only for a week this time, but you surface to the tight line of Lisa's lips, the furrow between her eyebrows that dealing with you just might make permanent. You hope you didn't scare Ben too bad; he gives you a wide berth now, and that hurts in ways you didn't expect. Without even trying, you're everything you ever secretly hated about your own father.

You think about leaving. You might be able to exist like this, but Lisa and Ben shouldn't have to. The only problem is, you've got nowhere to go. You can't hunt, not like this, and you promised. You _promised_, and that means something to you. It meant something to Sam, that you gave it to him when he asked, even when you didn't want to.

You slowly tune back into the world, let it wash over you through the haze of alcohol you wear like a cape. Bruce Wayne has Batman and Dean Winchester has Jack Daniels, and for the first time, you have to admit that neither of you are bulletproof. The booze wears you the way Batman wears Bruce, and maybe you've always known this is who you are when Sam is not around to make you a better man. Sam's the only hero you believe in now, and you wish you had the chance to tell him, to see him laugh and duck his head in embarrassment. You'd like to think that he knows, but he's in hell and you don't think even he could hold onto such a good thought in the pit.

Seventy-three days after your brother dies to save the world, you find a job. There's a bar on the outskirts of town that looks like it's seen better days, the neon sign only half-lit at night, the wood floor worn smooth by years of boots scuffing across it. The manager doesn't ask any questions; you shake on your hours and salary. You don't get benefits, but then, you never do. They pay you off the books and in bourbon, and you bring in about two hundred fifty a week. You give a hundred and fifty of it to Lisa, tuck it into her underwear drawer when she refuses it. You threaten to give it to Ben when she tries to give it back.

You get up in the mornings now, sit across from Ben at the breakfast table and drink coffee that's only occasionally spiked with liquor. Your skin still feels like it's too small, like you might sprout bones at any moment, but when you try to smile at the kid, you don't think your face is going to break wide open anymore. Maybe that's the best you can hope for in a world that no longer has Sam in it.

Ben looks up at you one day after breakfast and says, I've got a baseball game this afternoon. Do you want to come?

It's the first time he's asked you for anything, and he's a little pale, but his voice is steady and he holds your gaze. You look away first. Yeah, you say. Your voice is rough and soft, probably because you haven't said a whole lot in the past few months.

He looks surprised for a second, but he covers it quickly with a wide, genuine smile. Cool.

You shower and shave and get dressed. You go to a baseball game and watch a kid who might be your son hit the ball and run the bases. You drink from your flask of whiskey when your hands start to shake, but you manage a real smile when Ben gives you a hug after the game, smelling like boysweat and grass. It hurts, but it's the good kind of pain. Sam would be proud.

One hundred and seven days after your brother dies to save the world, you put your guns away. This is your life now, and you've got a promise to keep.

end

~*~


End file.
